The rarefied world of Hindustani classical music with its reverberating ragas, accomplished artists and coteries of connoisseurs, are all brought vibrantly alive in Rohini Paranjpe Sathe’s latest literary fiction, The Music Makers. Published by one of the country’s leading publishing houses, Om Books International, and represented by one of India’s largest literary agencies, The Book Bakers, this book is a masterly piece of storytelling.

The Music Makers opens with its lead protagonist, Padma Vibhushan Pandit Sadashiv Buwa Shrotri, on his way to perform in an evening concert. The fading light outside reminds him of his advancing age and the niggling fear that mortality may be closing in on him sooner than later. That prepares the way to the premise of the book: what is the legacy that an artist leaves behind? In this fast-paced world where classical traditions are being relegated to the margins, can an age-old art that is expounded at leisure hope to survive? Or, as one of the characters in the book asks caustically, will it become extinct like the dinosaurs?